I believe Jones has long since retreated from 'thermite demolition' theory to merely suggesting it was used as a fuse for ... errr ... 'something else'.
I believe Jones has long since retreated from 'thermite demolition' theory to merely suggesting it was used as a fuse for ... errr ... 'something else'.
chrismohr
Master Poster
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2011
- Messages
- 2,080
You don't sound like a fool to me at all. At any time in my research (and I have an English/journalism degree no science past my freshman year) I could be swayed by a real argument in favor of thermites and controlled demolition. Right now I am telling Kevin Ryan personally that an independent lab test of the thermites turning up positive would have a huge impact on my opinion. A lot of people on this thread are awfully sure of themselves. That's either strong scientific knowledge or just plain arrogance, who knows. My journalism teacher told me never to take anything at face value and never accept anything anyone says with verifying it. I must have asked, "Is this true?" 1000 times when looking at 9/11 Truth claims. On the technical side of the issue I have yet to come up with a single strong yes to that question. Not even once. But I had to plow and plow and ask and ask for months, and sometimes I tried JREF people's patience. Tough for them. I got the answers I sought and I never say anything unless I feel pretty confident I understand what I'm talking about now. Took awhile tho, right Oystein?
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
Was it really months? You asked your questions systematically, and in time we got there
You named one in the next paragraph - Niels Harrit. Another Chemist on the Truth side is Frank Legge. He was a coauthor of the Bentham paper.
What problems do you have with the "thermite chemistry"?
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
Add Marc Basile, who supposedly repeated some of the experiments on red-gray chips (and found they contain far less than 10% by weight the constituent elements of thermite)
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
I have to revise this somewhat, after re-reading the Opening Post. It was claimed there that a thermitic reaction can be had with elements other than aluminium.
This is true.
The main catch is that there is absolutely no claim by anyone at all in the entire truth movement of evidence for the use of any kind of thermite other than aluminium-based thermite.
So before you debate whether the lack of substance A proves "no therm?te", your debate partner should advance reasons why he supposed the presence of a therm?te sans aluminium. Basically, he is appealing to imagination.
ozeco41
Philosopher
for several years now on this thermite issue I have been making these two claims:
- "There are two related but separable questions.
- Was thermXte present; AND
- Was it used.
- "Even if there was a 100 tonne cache of thermite on Ground Zero, it wasn't used."
It seems that there is a lot of interest, amusement, pleasure in discussing whether or not thermXte or its residues were present. And interest in that discussion takes priority over other considerations. Like what are we trying to prove? Remember the comment "When you are up to your arse in alligators its easy to forget the objective was to drain the swamp." To my military trained mind the objective is "disprove that there was demolition using thermXte". And it is one hell of a lot easier to show "no demolition". And, once you have "no demolition" my second claim comes into effect "so what if there was 100 tonnes of thermXte on site, it wasn't used."
It's analogous to the "inside job" claims which also include demolition as part of the inside job. There cannot be an inside job of demolition since there was no demolition. So, from my perspective, why do we tackle the argument with truthers on the "ground of the truthers choosing" by arguing whether or not the material was present? It is irrelevant - there was no demolition.
Now that doesn't help our present colleague wollclark. To help him we either need to assist him to understand that there was no thermXte OR that there was no demolition. Preferably both.
I won't get pedantic over "scientific knowledge" - IMO it is engineering forensic knowledge. But take my "knowledge". I know that there was no demolition from my own examination of the evidence. But my knowledge of the thermite question is significantly different. I know that a number of people have put forward their professional examination of the evidence and they have concluded 'no thermXte'. And I assess their reasoning and judge that they have adequately covered the bases for me to agree with their findings. Primary example sunstealer on these threads.
But I am a civil and military trained engineer so my preference to come from the side of "no demolition so thermXte wasn't used".
And, no matter how many times I have raised it on at least three forums. nobody else seems interested in defeating the thermxte in demolition claims from the perspective of "no demolition".
[/rant]
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
ozeco, I never understand from whence you take your absolute confidence in "no demolition"?
It is true that there is no evidence for demolition.
But absence of evidence <> evidence of absence
Not?
If someone wants to claim "demolition", it's his duty to write this up as a testably theory. That theory must make falsifiable predictions. For example, if the theory states that "Some core column connections on floors 75-80 were softened by the heat of thermite charges that had such and such characteristics" (yes, we should eventually demand that level of detail), then a prediction could be made that says something like "of the 47 core columns, some pieces recovered from floors 75-80 must show failure mode X at their commections", and if it can be shown that all, or at least xx% of the connections have been examined and found not to exhibit that failure mode then the theory ís falsified.
What we have is:
- There exists no such theory
- There exists no such prediction
- There exist no such observations that can be interpreted as matching the predictions and thus serving as evidence for such a theory
Jones, Gage and others have suggested very vague theories that involve thermite, but without specifying much beyond that. They predict that unreacted thermite or reaction products should be present in the dust. They present observations and claim that these observations match the prediction.
Well, the theory is too vague, the prediction is too vague, but most importantly, the interpretation of the observations is plain wrong.
We shouldn't state that no demolition did place. We should ask how the buildings were demolished, and listen to the Great Silence.
It is true that there is no evidence for demolition.
But absence of evidence <> evidence of absence
Not?
If someone wants to claim "demolition", it's his duty to write this up as a testably theory. That theory must make falsifiable predictions. For example, if the theory states that "Some core column connections on floors 75-80 were softened by the heat of thermite charges that had such and such characteristics" (yes, we should eventually demand that level of detail), then a prediction could be made that says something like "of the 47 core columns, some pieces recovered from floors 75-80 must show failure mode X at their commections", and if it can be shown that all, or at least xx% of the connections have been examined and found not to exhibit that failure mode then the theory ís falsified.
What we have is:
- There exists no such theory
- There exists no such prediction
- There exist no such observations that can be interpreted as matching the predictions and thus serving as evidence for such a theory
Jones, Gage and others have suggested very vague theories that involve thermite, but without specifying much beyond that. They predict that unreacted thermite or reaction products should be present in the dust. They present observations and claim that these observations match the prediction.
Well, the theory is too vague, the prediction is too vague, but most importantly, the interpretation of the observations is plain wrong.
We shouldn't state that no demolition did place. We should ask how the buildings were demolished, and listen to the Great Silence.
How many tons of thermite would be required to equal the heat energy of the office contents that burned prior to collapse of 1, 2, and 7?
How many tons of thermite would it take to equal the heat energy of the jet fuel on each aircraft?
Last edited:
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
Beachnut,
to be honest, that comparison doesn't quite cut it. There is of course a major difference between random fires that extend over quite an area, and conceivable charges of a concentrated incendiary placed in direct contact with a neuralgic structural component. It's a matter of efficiency.
ozeco41
Philosopher
True - what I didn't say was that I deliberately overstate the case and still get no response.
That said it isn't hard to go down the "was there demolition?" track and find that no case has ever been made - or whatever "degree of proof" you are looking for. And allowing for the "absence of evidence <> evidence of absence" problem.
And the "no demolition by thermXte" track is even narrower than the "no demolition" track
Plus the other "great silence" when we ask "how was it possible to use thermXte to assist in the mechanisms of collapse which actually happened?" etc etc......
And, despite my shortcuts with the logic you are still the only one to respond.
MIKILLINI
Incromulent Logic
- Joined
- May 3, 2007
- Messages
- 2,979
You don't sound like a fool at all wollclark; You sound more like someone trying to educate yourself with facts to determine what's real or just delusional claims. At this point, you are farther ahead than any "sucked in conspiracist" because you're not quite buying into all the idiotic crap these truthers are spewing. Science has proven them wrong on virtually all of their ridiculous claims. There are many people in this forum whose experience and expertise can show you the science and calculations in a way that can be understood more easily.
Welcome to the forum.
Last edited:
You mean 3,150 tons of thermite don't release the same heat energy of 10,000 gallons of jet fuel?
Or the office fires were not many times the heat energy of 3,150 tons of thermite?
Yes there is a big difference between office fires and thermite. Office fires need no logistics to bring in fuel, they have the fuel in the office already. Using thermite would be a logistics nightmare, tons of thermite would take a lot of extra effort to bring in an office; big difference. The concentrated fires in the WTC towers, due to impacts sweeping office contents into selected sections, is not like a normal office fire, which is why fires started on multiple floors releasing 5 to 10 times the heat energy of 3,150 tons of thermite in less than 1 to 2 hours destroyed the WTC. With the help of impacts 7 to 11 times the design the towers were designed to survive, which ripped off tons of insulation, which means the towers would fail faster.
The overall point, 911 truth can't explain how thermite was used to destroy the WTC; office fires did destroy the WTC. Does it follow 911 truth fails to understand office fires can destroy buildings?
Last edited:
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
No, I don't mean that at all. Try reading, then thinking, then understanding, and then replying.
This is all correct, yet misses the point that I made.
Try again!
wollclark
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2010
- Messages
- 412
The second post's video link is down. Is there a mirror?
Robrob
Philosopher
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2011
- Messages
- 5,497
Efficient or not, 3,150 tons of randomly placed thermite would have brought down the WTC - right? So the fires being equivalent to 3,150 tons of thermite still would have brought the tower down, no CD required.
Efficiently placing 1/1,000th of that amount (3.15 tons of thermite) still would have been a Herculean task and still would have been a waste of time because the jet fuel would bring down the building on its own.
Last edited:
Oystein
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2009
- Messages
- 18,903
Maybe, probably, but frankly, how are we supposed to know or guess that?
Actually, I think 3,150 tons of randomly placed thermite would have brought down the WTC a lot faster than jet fuel and office contents did - or not at all - on account of it burning much faster.
"Herculean" is a big word.
I agree with you, but we're only fathoming felt probabilities here.
Without anyone actually presenting a feasibly game plan as their theory, we can't really test our intuition.
ozeco41
Philosopher
Yes. It is meaningless unless someone has a technical plan of the method - which means the mechanism - of enabling collapse with thermXte playing an assisting role. And that technical plan has to be invisible and remain invisible post the event.
I have thought through the assignment several times from the perspective of me, the Army Engineers commander, who has given the task by the General to "bring down that tower knowing that we will fly a plane into it". Bottom line is, with 20/20 hindsight I think I could mimic the actual collapses of the Twins without the aircraft crash bit.
Couldn't do it with the crash bit included. ..AND couldn't keep it secret no matter what.
Same situation if the agent is high explosive rather than thermite.
One difficulty is getting the suicide teams to install the devices whilst the fires raged after the crash and without cooking off the explosives/thermXte......and it gets even more absurd from here on so I'll stop.
Last edited:
Jet fuel equaled the heat energy of over 315 tons of thermite, not 3,150 tons. But the office fires were much more heat than the jet fuel, as much as 3,150, but I would have to go back and see the estimates for the fires again. NIST was able to say the jet fuel fires were not significant because the office fires were almost an order of magnitude more heat energy.
No one corrected my mistake. The jet fuel would be close to 315 tons of thermite in heat energy. But the office fires were close to 3,000 tons of thermite in heat energy. I made factual comparison on energy, you made up comparisons I never made. In fact, there is no rational comparison, there is no way thermite was used in the WTC; period. Idiots made up the lies about thermite being used, and idiots believe the lies; that is the truth.
I was trying to get the truthers to do some math, or something more than paste and cut delusional lies. I failed. I made no comparison past equal energy. I thinks it is funny, if you make comparisons between office fires and thermite, it goes downhill for 911 truth.